The One You Feed - Be the Change You Want to See with Ukeme Awakessien Jeter

Episode Date: August 18, 2025

In this episode, Ukeme Awakessien Jeter explores the importance of learning to be the change you want to see. She shares her journey as an immigrant and Black woman in a predominantly white suburb, discussing adaptability, leadership, and civic engagement. She reflects on raising her daughter, building inclusive communities, and the unique leadership strengths immigrants bring. The conversation also touches on feeling overwhelmed in life as Ukeme reminds us that when our days feel full to bursting, it might just mean they are filled with things that we deeply value.Every Wednesday, we send out A Weekly Bite of Wisdom – a short, free email that distills the big ideas from the podcast into bite-sized practices you can use right away. From mental health and anxiety to relationships and purpose, it’s practical, powerful, and takes just a minute to read. Thousands already count on it as part of their week, and as a bonus, you’ll also get a weekend podcast playlist to dive deeper. Sign up at oneyoufeed.net/newsletter!Key Takeaways:Adaptability and its importance in navigating new environments and challenges.The personal experiences of an immigrant and a Black woman in a predominantly white community.The impact of racial isolation on children and the importance of fostering inclusion.The significance of civic engagement and community involvement in driving change.The role of leadership in addressing systemic issues and promoting diversity.The concept of “feeding the good wolf” as a metaphor for nurturing positive qualities.The value of asking “how” questions to encourage understanding and collaboration.The challenges and strategies for building authentic connections in diverse communities.The importance of cultural intelligence and authenticity in leadership.The need for intentional efforts to create inclusive environments for future generations.If you enjoyed this conversation with Ukeme Awakessien Jeter, check out these other episodes:Conscious Leadership with Eric KaufmannDiscovering Your Inner Resilience and Strength with Mark NepoFor full show notes, click here!Connect with the show:Follow us on YouTube: @TheOneYouFeedPodSubscribe on Apple Podcasts or SpotifyFollow us on InstagramSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

There's some critical skills that it takes to start new. Some people even have a taste of that, just moving out of their parents' house or moving to a new city. You've got to be adaptable. It's going to be unfamiliar. You're going to be thrown a bunch of curveballs. How do you adapt to those things without going under? Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts. we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.

Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Is it possible that overwhelm might sometimes signal a life filled with what truly matters? My guest today, Ukemi, a Waukesean Jeter, recently shared a weekend so busy it would make most of our headspin. Traveling hundreds of miles, attending your daughter's track meet, leading civic events, showing up as a friend. 500 miles in a car over the weekend. But rather than seeing chaos,

Ukemi saw a life brimming with meaning and purpose. In this conversation, she reminds us that when our days feel full to bursting, it might just mean they're filled with things that we deeply value. So if you've ever wrestled with the paradox of loving a life that feels overwhelming, this is an episode you won't want to miss. I'm Eric Zimmer, and this is the one you feed.

Hi, Ukemi. Welcome to the show. Thank you. It's great to be here. For those of you who are listening, you cannot see this, but Ukemi and I are sitting together in a studio in Columbus, Ohio. She is one thing that she is. She's the mayor of Upper Arlington, which is a town that I lived in for about 12 years while raising my boys. So we have the fun of talking in person. We're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about her book called Immigrant, How Immigrant Leadership Drives Business Success. And we'll get into all that in a moment, but we'll start like we have.

always do with the parable. And in the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild, and they say in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops. Think about it for a second, they look up at their grandparent, and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. First of all, like, that is like an incredible parable

because I think about it as, you know, I grew up with Christian parents. You know, there's always the good angel and the bad angel, right? Kind of akin to this. But that intentionality about the one that you feed, you know, is missing from the very good angel, bad angel kind look. So this thought that, hey, the one that you feed, the one that you pay attention to,

the one that you pour into is the one that wins. I love that. You know, I intentionally have to, given that I'm usually the only or one of few in many rooms that I've been in in my life, there's always just that fear that I have to quail. The fear of, are you enough? Are you in the right room? Are you? Can people understand you, you know, being an immigrant with an accent? And it takes intentional kind of rewiring to remind myself that I know. need to be in that room that I, to feed into the idea that I am enough to feed into the idea that I do have something to contribute. So I love that pair. For people who are listening cannot see you when you say you're sometimes the only one in the room, you mean as a black person, the only one in the room, as an immigrant. As an immigrant, yeah.

And you're moving in some extraordinarily white rooms. Upper Arlington as a town is, I mean, I joke in. would call it the whitest place on the planet. I'm sure it's not, but it's not far off. I mean, there were things about sending my son to school there that I thought were really good. But one of the things I did not think was good was the absolute lack of diversity that was there. Like, I saw that as a big strike in the column for that as a public school system, from my perspective. Yeah.

And I think most people would agree with you. That is a shortcoming for our... our city. And the reason that we all choose to live in Upper Arlington, I think, are similar, right? In a ring suburb, the beautiful old, 100-year-old trees, right? The older homes, parks, wreck, the good schools. So poll any human, and those would be factors that would be a human when they live in the community. So the question is, well, how did Upper Arlington become the place that only a certain subject of humans that want that live there? i.e., mostly white. It's about only 1.2% of Upper Arlington is black. With a population of about 38,000 people, that's only, if you do the math, that's only about 600 of us that are black. There's about 7% that are mixed race or Asian or population of color. So if you're doing that right, 90% of Upper Arlington is 89 to 90% of Upper Arlington is white.

But it's not something that I thought about when I moved there. It wasn't something that I had the factors that I just said earlier. You know, I wanted the great schools, the beautiful home, the fact that I was close to downtown. And it was really my daughter's experience as the only black kid in her kindergarten class that heightened for me what that feels like in community. Because usually when I say I'm one of few or one of only in the room, I'm talking about in corporate spaces. Right. You know, I've never understood what that feeling is like in community until I experienced it through my daughter. Yeah, and as a child, right?

You're an adult and you have ways of processing. Correct. Okay, I'm the only person here that's of color in this room and I understand some of the reasons why that is. And I've done enough work on myself that I don't take that on board. For kids, it's a different story. A five-year-old child, yes, they don't have the words. They don't have the process. Their kitchen table looks very different, right?

The home that they return to at the end of the day looks very different. And for my daughter, the words that she had was, mom, can you straighten my hair for school the next day? And in her mind, she thought changing something about the way that she looked was the thing to do, to create belonging. And children shouldn't have to, shouldn't have to at five, think about that. Right, right. So the question is, what can community do, even if you're a community that's mostly white? Is it possible to build community where, if you're not white, you still feel like you belong? Yep.

That was a challenge. That was the challenge for me. Right. And you talk in certain places about being at a crossroads. Yes. And you call that as sort of a, you're forced to make a decision, right? Yeah. And so your daughter coming to you like that forces you to make a decision, which is either, oh, I made the wrong choice.

This is the wrong community for us. Time to get out of here. Or I'm going to stay here and find a way to make it work. And you chose the latter. Mm-hmm. What was going through that decision like? How are you going through that in your head? Yeah.

From a practical standpoint, I had just moved 200 miles from Cleveland. So to Columbus. So there was just pure exhaustion from moving, right? From a very practical standpoint, it's just like, I cannot do all of this again. There was certainly that. And then the other aspect was we hear this, be the change you want to see, quote from Gandhi. And just philosophy is out there. You know, everyone's like, be the change you want to see.

Well, what does that really mean in practice? And what does that mean if you're going to show your children be the change you want to see? And so I took that on. Like, there's some things you can't just write in. There's some change you can't just phone in or, you know, call people on. And that's what I've been used to do in my whole life. Something's not right. I write about it.

I, you know, send an email to the person in charge to share my thoughts, share my insight, share my idea. What about jumping in the arena? That's really being the change you want to see. And it was important for my kids to see that in its application that you can be the change you want to see. And where did that start? So now you are the mayor of Upper Arlington, which is, again, I find, meeting you now, I'm like, well, of course she is. But before that, right, you're like, really? You know, like, okay.

You know, it's good. So there's a big distance between this moment of your daughter at five and she's 12 now. So seven years later, now you are one of the preeminent leaders in the community. Yeah. What did the early steps look like for you of saying, all right, I'm staying and I'm going to embody and bring about some of the change that I think we could have here? Yeah. The early days really started by paying attention to the environment my daughter was in. So paying attention to her classroom, pulling attention to what the playground looked like, paying attention to programming that was available in the community.

for her to go to and the people that came to it. And the very first light bulb for me, so this is all happening like October 2018, and I remember everyone the stats because I just do. My first Black History Month in Upper Arlington was February 2019. This is about six months after I'd moved to the community, right? And so I am dropping my daughter off at school

and notice that there, if Black History Month is happening in corporate where I was at, it's not happening in her school. There's no poster. There's, you know, you send the Friday notes, the teacher sends the Friday notes in class on what they learned. Nothing. Nothing had come up. And it dawned on me. This even really wasn't about my daughter being the only. It was also that other kids were not getting exposure to information or to activities or to learnings, which kids are beautiful.

They don't understand this, you know, whatever you expose them to allows them to have curiosity, allows them to have conversation. But if you don't expose them to things that allow them to talk about it, then they just grow up and we hear stories of people finding out in college for the first time of some. stat that they didn't know before that they probably should have known. And so that lack of exposure led me to ask the question of the community. I went to the Upper Arlington Discussion Forum on Facebook to it. And I asked the question, what does our community do for Black History Month? And that post was met with so much curiosity, so much wonder, you know, the community members just even in their own, just saying, wait, we don't do anything. Wait, I thought, you know, became one of those pointing things.

Doesn't the library do something? Shouldn't the city be doing something? Is that the park? Like, everyone is wondering, who's doing the thing? Right. Right? And didn't realize that no one. These things weren't happening, right?

The library had some book collections at that point. The PTOs, in particular schools, since each school has its own PTO, some PTOs were doing stuff. But overall, no one was holistically looking at the exposure our community members got. And so that's kind of where it started. It started with diving in there. And before I knew it, I was serving on boards and commissions within the city. And in 2020, well, 2020, we all know what happened in 2020. Not only COVID, but there was this racial awakening, right?

And so by 2021, there was a seat coming up on city council. And I'd only lived in the community three years at that point. And one of my neighbors that had kind of been on the journey since 2019 when I was asking questions. working with different community members and bringing the city its first Black History Month, said, hey, there's a seat opening up on council. You should run. And it never crossed my mind. And I said, I first laughed at the idea.

I'm like, three years, I have a name like you, Kemi. Like, no community recognition whatsoever. Like, that's obnoxious, right? And back to that, be the change you want to see in the Hamilton soundtrack is one of my favorite soundtracks. There's a song on there, the room where it happens. We often think, all these loss policies, all this impact that we have to feel from things that were done. It all started in the room. And the song is like, no one was in the room where it happened, the room where it happened. And I thought, I need to be in the room where it happens. And in order to be in the room where

it happens, you got to do the hard thing of running for office and putting yourself out there and getting elected. And so that's what I did. that's how it started you talk about asking a how question instead of a why question right so if we think about you and your five-year-old daughter the why question is why why are there no black people in upper arlington or so few why and and i think there's also a chance that the why question pivots you towards judgment and anger absolutely and you talk about how how question pivots you towards curiosity. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that's a concept I talk about in my book, Immigrant, because I think when you're really leading across difference or in a room with a lot of difference to avoid judgment, to your point, that why question almost puts you on the defense. If you've ever tried to ask a 10-year-old or a teenager, why? They'll just say, because, right? That feels like it. I mean, adults do it too.

Yeah, right. Because it can create that judgment and instant kind of defensiveness. Right. But when you ask, how did you come to believe? How did we? It allows people to explain. And actually, you that asked the question, too, it puts you in a very curious position where you're really listening to the history or their understanding of what happened or what transpired. And a lot of that happened through understanding my daughter's experience. It's from there, rather than ask, why did this inner ring suburb city only have 1.2% black? And then you. The how question, how did we come to be this city? Then you start to learn about the things like redlining. Then you start to understand the things about the socio-economics. Then you start to understand, you know, the how reveals this history, what it's taken for us to get there. And it also invites something about how, the how question.

It also invites people to be part of the solution. I was going to say it immediately there is a pivot towards, okay, How could it be different? Yes. Right. What would we need to do for it to be different, right? I mean, it is a, it puts you into sort of a solution. And this is an oversimplification, but a guest who's been on the show a few times quotes Quincy Jones, who says, I don't have problems.

I have puzzles, right? Now, I'm not saying that some of the things we're dealing with on a grand scale are puzzles, right? They're more serious than that. But that pivot from this is a problem to this is a puzzle. puzzle is that pivot to, oh, okay, puzzles have solutions, right? Puzzles, you know, you can work on a puzzle. When it's a problem, until the problem is gone, it's just, oh, it sucks. Puzzle, you can enjoy solving to a certain degree, right?

It's just a different framework, which I think it was what you're talking about when you're talking about moving on those questions. Absolutely, absolutely. And, you know, in this instance, for me, what started as three women that believed in me and said, yeah, you can do this, you can run for office. And me having a mirror conversation with myself to face the inner critic and say, yes, you can do this, led to a team of almost 70 people that towards the end of the campaign that helped the campaign in some way and touched the campaign in some way. How are you finding Or how do you get people to be civically involved, right? I mean, I was not very civicly involved. involved when I was there. I was busy with a career. I was busy with two kids. I just

wasn't, I wasn't real civically involved. And I think a lot of people are, well, I think if you just look at studies, we're far less civically involved as a culture than we used to be. Yeah. How, were these the people that were already kind of showing up to these things? Or was there something that pulled people out? And if so, how did you, did you have to pull people out, or did they kind of come on their own? I, and this is one of the big initiatives I've worked on on council, civic engagement, and most of what I've implemented has come from how I ran the campaign. Here's what I realized about people running my campaign and trying to get them involved.

A, you've got to understand what they desire to get out of the experience, and you've got to make the experience a delightful one for them. I'll give an example. If you want volunteers to help with lit drop, and I don't know how many volunteer experiences you've had, but you show up and it's unorganized and you haven't like specifically cut out the sheet and said, this is your section and we don't give them 500 things. We give them the 50 that you're hitting today. It's only going to take you two hours. We kind of outline for them exactly how it's going to go. So I talk about that being delight the volunteer experience.

And then they go do it and they'll be back because you made it so seamless and so easy for them to be involved. So I'm always critically thinking about in order to get people to engage, you've got to meet them where they are. So sometimes we were doing these, it was block parties or meeting at coffee shops. We're not creating or plugging into existing events. We're not creating a whole new thing for them to just like, oh, another thing to have to. Another thing to do, yeah. you know, you're kind of figuring out a way to integrate that experience into things that they're already going to be at or that it's existing. And I've done this with our boards and

commissions in the city because we need new ideas and we need people to serve on those boards and commissions. So it starts everywhere from our recruiting process. How do we talk about our boards and commissions? How do we talk about how it ties in? That's perhaps the purpose piece. People that ended up working on my campaign understood the purpose of what we were trying to do. And they had like grounding language about how we're going to conduct ourselves. It was going to be fun. It was always going to be positive. We don't bash on the other candidates on this campaign. So everyone is tied by purpose to start with. And then the second thing, like I said, is like after you've shared what you would get from the experiences, recruiting in a way where it's

easy and understandable, don't have a 20-page application to be a volunteer. It needs to be three questions. Yep. Right? Figure what that is. The same thing. even in government, even in like serving on a thing like a big board and commission, then invite them in for the interview. So that's a big piece. It's like how do you really think about very much like a customer service, and I've probably been in corporate too long, but I think about civic engagement as how do you delight that volunteer in their experience. What was your corporate career in before? So I have had, I have worn many hats. I started my corporate career as a mechanical engineer.

Okay. I was a project engineer. and I traveled around the country. I like to tease with my kids, but it is true, literally. I was a toilet paper engineer, so I worked on paper products, specifically toilet paper, and my task was to make it softer. I've never felt more validated of my toilet paper experience than COVID. When everyone was running around to pick up toilet paper, I knew that I could make it if I needed to.

I was like, I was not worried. I was like, I know how to make toilet paper. and make it soft of that too, you know? So I started my career there. I did that for almost a decade. And I went to law school. And then I graduated law school. I was a non-traditional student.

Graduated law school came out, did intellectual property. So I worked in private practice as an intellectual property attorney. The third grade understanding of that is I helped companies protect their innovation and their brands. Right. And then I went in-house. And that's kind of how I. came here to Central Ohio, Columbus. I was in the financial and insurance tech industry, and that's how I came in. And I worked in-house in corporate as an attorney and did that for a few years and then ran for office. And now I'm at OSU. I'm an administrator and professor. So is being

mayor not a full-time position? Not in Upper Arlington. It's not. Some cities, it's a full-time position, not in Upper Arlington. How our form of government is is we have the seven-person elected council, and then we hire a city manager and the city manager is the executor. Got it. Yeah. Okay. So you did make a new career change?

I did make a recent career change. Yes, I went into academia. Okay. Yeah. It's been fun. They do global education. So most of my programs are the international programs for the law school, Meritz Law School at OSU. Yeah.

I have a bunch of questions about being an IP lawyer that have nothing to do with this show. I'm going to just set those aside and move forward. But I was having a conversation with a young lawyer about IP law. Oh, neat. Anyway, we'll come to that later. Of course, I always love to talk about IP. You had a recent LinkedIn post where you shared something, which was basically your weekend. Yeah.

Tell us about your weekend. A recent weekend. Oh, my goodness. It's always this crazy. I think the one I posted on LinkedIn, it was I was down in Cincinnati. Which is about two hours from here. Two hours from Columbus. And then I had to get back up to Springfield for my daughter's track meet, which that took an hour and 15 minutes ago from Cincinnati to her track meet.

Watched her track meet and enjoyed her track meet, cheered her on. She did fantastic place. Went back down to Cincinnati to finish out the rest of the program I was there for, which is Leadership, Ohio. And we're traveling around the state to learn about different parts. of the state. I went back down there, came back from there to Columbus. I had a friend's baby shower. I had to be on, I was teaching a webinar that day, so I had to be on for that. Just so by the time I got to Monday, I was, and then after that, then I was in Mansfield, Ohio. I left Columbus, went to Mansfield and then Mansfield back. I put like 500 miles in my car that week.

Like almost 10 hours driving, right? Yeah, he said it was like 10 hours. Yeah, in the car. Get into all these things. It sounds insane because you look at your weekends like, well, why were all those things scheduled in one weekend? You know, you'd have some critics say that. But it's just the season and the reality of the life that I'm in right now. And I kind of had to look at that weekend and take it for what it is.

I did, I was a mom, I was a civic leader, I was an educator, all the things that are important to me. I was a friend. All the things were important to me were part of that weekend. And so I couldn't knock it for being this hectic, unwieldy, why did everyone schedule everything in that weekend? I just had to figure out a way to stretch my bandwidth a bit. Yeah. So I could be there and enjoy all those things. Yes, I was wiped.

By the time I got to Monday, but I was grateful that I could do that, and I was able to. Yeah, I loved it partially because we just launched a new course called Overwhelm is optional. And the core idea is exactly what you're saying, which is that for most people, their lives are as full as they want them to be. Like there's moments where you're like, gosh, this is too much. But everything you're doing is of value, it's importance to you. There's a lot of advice of like, just slow down, do less. And that used to feel frustrating to me when I would hear it because I'd be like, well, but I don't really want to or I can't mean by can't, I mean I would give up something I value in order. I would have to act against something I value in order to do it.

So if you can't reduce the amount, all you can do is reduce how you relate to it. And that's what I loved about your post is because you did that work of relating to it instead of I have to do this, I have to do this, I have to do. do this. You related to it from this point of these things are all valuable to me and I get to do them and you know what? The cost of that is a little franticness and tiredness, but I'm okay with that. Yeah. Oh, I love this course. When can I sign up? You don't tell me more. No, it's great teaching because I think we're living in an era of no, say no, and like you get to control your life and do all these things, but we don't give the flip side of that, yes, you get to control your life.

And if you want to fill it with things meaningful, sometimes, that does mean overwhelm. Yes, yeah, yeah. You know, but you've got to look at it from the lens of, I'm grateful that I get to experience all these things, and it will land better. Yeah. Even if you're just a little bit tired, it will land better for you. Yeah, I think.

Attitude is everything. Yeah, it was when my boys were teenagers that I had the insight of I was complaining about taking one of them to one practice and another to another practice on the side of town. I was in that I have to do all this. And I just had the thought, I was like, no, I don't. I don't have to. There's no law on the books that says I got to take my kid to soccer practice. Like, I'm choosing to. And why am I choosing to? Oh, I'm choosing to because I think it's good for him. He like, I mean, now I'm back in the driver's seat of my own life. And I'm, and I'm realizing that the things I do are choices. Yeah. And that makes such a big

difference. Yeah, I love that. Yeah. You tell a story about having a Joey in your life. Tell me who's Joey. Joey's my first boss, my first corporate boss right out of engineering school. Just a fantastic gentleman actually start immigrant with a story about Joey. Because I remember when I was interviewing for jobs and I still cannot remember to this day who it was. It probably was someone in our career office that had said, you'll have a lot of opportunities. I mean, you're female mechanical engineer. Like, at that point, 2004, like, there's not a lot of girls in STEM and everyone's trying to get their hands on one. So you're going to have a lot of opportunities. How you're going to pick it, or one thing you should consider, and I would consider, like,

the big thing you should consider is how well you relate to who your manager is going to be, your direct boss. So if anything, yeah, you can get the fancy company titles, but I would go for the boss. And I thought it was a really great advice, and it's one that I give to my mentees now, too. Very, very early on in your career, I think who you get as that direct manager, your sponsor, your mentor, your advocate is that boss. And for me, that person was Joey, and I picked how did I become a toilet paper engineer? I thought I was going to go to mechanical engineering school, I ended up working on German cars. That was my dream. I love German cars. I wanted to like design and build them. I ended up as a toilet paper engineer because when I went in the

interview and had an opportunity to interview with Joey and knew who was going to be my Derek boss, we just had great rapport, great conversations, and I chose that opportunity. And it worked out really well for me. As an immigrant, there's also just different pressures in terms of proving yourself to be able to stay and contribute to the economy of work in the United States. And much of that proving yourself comes in the visa processes, the work visas that you have to get. And Joey didn't know very much about the process, actually. But what he knew is that I was worth keeping and he was willing to listen to what it was that we had to do, how to position me. Because you get three years into the, and you have to get your work visa, you have to,

there's a process where your company has to show of all the people they interviewed you, why it was you. Most companies don't want to go through that. They're just going to be like, you're not that great. Okay, we'll just go with, if it causes us less work, you know, it causes HR less work, go with this. But he was willing to go that journey. And so it solidified for me. Why tell my mentees now that that first boss in the career that you believe you want matters. Yeah. Matters. They'll give you the opportunities. They'll advocate for your rooms that you're not in. And they'll guide you. Like, you know, Joe will tell me, that's not that important, George. You didn't do that that great. Try this, right? And we're young and moldable enough.

that it's important to have that honesty right off the bat because it becomes less and less so the more you go in your career yep hey friend before we dive back in i want you to take a second and think about what you've been listening to what's one thing that really landed and what's one tiny action you could take today to live it out those little moments of reflection that's exactly why i started good wolf reminders short free text messages that land in your phone once or twice a week Nearly 5,000 people already get them and say the quick bursts of insight help them shift out of autopilot and stay intentional in their lives. If that sounds like your kind of thing, head to one you feed.net slash SMS and sign up. It's free, no spam, and easy to opt out of any time. Again, that's one you feed.

Dot net slash SMS. Tiny nudges, real change. All right, back to the show. It's interesting. I got to see my Joey about two weeks ago, which is rare because he lives in Austin, Texas. Yeah. And it's possible I've never talked about him on this show amazingly. So I'm excited to be able to. His name's Charles Fry. And I, you know, at 25, I was a homeless heroin addict.

I got a job sort of in the tech business customer support. But this was the first, like, big job that I sort of landed was with him in this small organization. and it was him. Yeah, yeah. And then it turned into, we became part of a startup. And I remember, I thought I was going to be a network engineer because I could study for it. I had never been to college and I could study and you could get these certifications and I got them all. And we started this new startup company.

He said, I want you to go over and do this thing called integration work. And I said, I have no idea how to do any of what you're saying. I trained to do this. I want to do this. And he said, no, you know, you would be an okay network engineer. You could be great at this. And I still sort of argued and I said, finally, okay, I'll go do it for three months with the agreement that after three months, I can come back and do this. And he was dead right.

And it changed the whole direction of my career completely. I never would have had the career I had without him seeing something in me that I didn't at all and believing in me. And putting me in roles that I, we were startups, startups you do this, but you end up in roles you have no business being in. Yeah. But thankfully, I, you know, landed on my feet. And it really, you know, was what guided my career until six years. Today is actually the six year anniversary of me leaving my full-time job to do this podcast. Hi, everybody.

Happy, happy Freedom Day. That is incredible. Today's the six-year anniversary, yeah. Now, what was the decision? See, I'm going to turn this into my podcast now. How did you arrive? That's very brave. I mean, how did you arrive? There's the safety net of having a full-time thing. Oh, yeah. It was tough. I, you know, about three years in. So I've been doing the podcast while having a full-time job. This is the busy time I was talking about. I've got a full-time career that's going well. I've got a kids. I've got a podcast that's going well. I've got a mother who needs medical attention. Like my life. is full and I don't, I don't want to give up any of it. Yeah.

But about three years in, I started to dream a little bit. Like, maybe I could do this full time. Like, this could be my career. Because I had started a solar energy company. I think as I went on in my career at first was like, can I make any money doing anything? Right? I'm a homeless heroin addict. I never went to college.

Like, just can I make any money doing anything? And over time, there was always that, but it started to become a little bit more of like, can I really enjoy what I'm doing? But, and then it was like, can what I do have what feels like a bigger meaning? Yeah. So I started a solar energy company. And that solar energy company went about five years and it flopped for a bunch of different reasons.

And it was in the wreckage of that that I started doing this. Yeah. And I realized like, oh, I love doing this. And so about three years, I started dreaming like maybe I could do it full time. And I was out of startups at that point. I was in a corporate, big corporate job doing really big software projects and starting to finally make real, real money. Like, you know, you get to be, what am I, if I was 10, 10 years ago, you know, mid-40s.

It's like when you've done it long enough that, like, they're throwing the real money at you. And ironically, there was a point where they said, they, like, they hit a point where they're like, if he leaves, we are screwed. So they gave me a bonus to stay for a year, which turned out to be the thing that sprung me. Yeah. Because I was like, okay, with that bonus.

bonus and some savings, I can go. I can do this thing. And so, yes, it did feel, it did feel risky. I mean, my, my boys weren't at home, but I was on the hook for paying all their college. I mean, I still felt like, I was nervous, but I felt like I had a plan and it's worked. Now, I don't make the kind of money I made then. I know.

I mean, I'm not making that kind of money that I did then, still. I mean, and I don't regret to this. Right. And I don't regret the decision, right? Like, you know, I go spend three weeks in the U.K. coming up because I can, you know, because of this thing. So, but yeah, it's funny that we got to talk about Joey. So thank you, Charles, which is six-year anniversary. Oh, wow.

That's incredible. Which is how I ended up with a stupid haircut. Because then you're finally, you're like, I'm not in corporate. I can do my... My one-year anniversary, I was like, I'm going to go get a stupid haircut. I'm going to go get a dumb haircut that I wouldn't have gotten in a corporate job. And I'll shave it off tomorrow. It stayed.

Well, this is your brand. You know, now you've become. Yeah. All right. Back on topic with you, though. So thank you for the little detour. I do want to talk about the book a little bit. Oh, always.

And talk about that. In the book, you talk about a core idea, which is shifting the perception people have from the immigrant struggle to immigrant leadership. Yeah. Talk to me about what immigrants bring. that's special. This is a great question because I think most times when people think about immigrants and immigration, they think about that journey on the boat and they have to learn a language and all these things. And they forget that these are people.

We're not a monolithic group by any means. But they've left what is familiar to start anew. There's some critical skills that it takes to start new. Yeah. That perhaps people, some people even have a taste of that just moving out of their parents' house or moving to a new city. You probably get some taste of you got to be adaptable. Right. It's going to be unfamiliar.

You're going to be thrown a bunch of curveballs. How do you adapt to those things without going under? That's one. There is a resourcefulness that it takes. I don't care whether you're the Prince of Persia and you have a million dollars or you have pennies. that when you're on a new system, you've got to learn the system, you've got to figure out, again, if you're a millionaire, you've got to figure out, oh, bank, do I have to put this money in that they gains interest. All of that stuff, all of those skills takes resourcefulness. And it requires you to build new networks. And again, they've got to be resilient. And I talk about it as kind of like resilient plus, because we think about resilience and we think about this concept of bouncing back. There's no bounce back for them. It's not like they can bounce back to where they came from. It's all bouncing forward. It's bouncing somewhere new.

It's bouncing somewhere new. It's bouncing every setback that they have. The bounce back means that they're springing just a little bit forward, right? All these things. And then grit because you've made that journey and you're committed to seeing it through, right? And so it's like all of that is what I coined immigrant. Like that adaptability, that resilience, that resourcefulness, that grit. that's immigrant.

That's the aspect of the immigrant experience that I think we fail to talk about or understand. And it translates to how they work, how they are as talent in the workplace that we miss. You talk about how I don't have the numbers in front of me, but how very underrepresented they are in our leadership structures. Yeah, 3% of Fortune 100 CEOs are immigrants. Meanwhile, 50% of Fortune 500 companies were built by immigrants. Think about every household brand that you know of. Google, Levi's, AT&T.

All of them, all started founded by immigrants, and immigrants are not leading this. I like to say in some of the research that uncovered from the book, we'll see immigrants in kind of what I call technical leadership or functionally technical leadership. So your chief technology officer is likely an immigrant from India, right? But you don't see them with broad levels of leadership. and we've got to ask ourselves why. And I say this in the book, too. If I was to ask anyone, what is the skill set that you think a CEO needs or leader at a high level needs? Adaptability would come up.

Markets are going to change. We need someone that, you know, can perform under pressure. Can bop and we even, they would say that resilience is there. They would see grit. All these qualities I talk about an immigrant, you're going to say, we want that. that and a leader in here. And the wonderful thing about these skills or the interesting about these skills, it's not stuff you can go to Harvard Business School and learn.

You've got to live. Adaptability doesn't just come to you. You've got to live through situations that require you. It's almost more wisdom than it is knowledge. Yes. Right. Oh, I love that. I love that for him.

That's exactly it. Yeah. It's not a textbook learning. You've got to live through these things. Yeah. And here's a population. Again, we're not a monolithic group by any means. But here's a population that I can pick up,

and without even knowing the full story, can tell you that they've lived these things. They've lived these qualities time and time again. So why are we missing that in our recruitment and our talent elevation and getting them to leadership roles? You talk about giving a commencement speech back at your alma mater.

Yeah. And one of the things you talked there was you were telling students to confidently go off script. Say more about that. Yeah, there's a lot of scripts that were kind of dealt in life, and I didn't necessarily write about this, but everyone knows it.

You go to college, you get this degree, and you work that path, right? You don't rock the boat, right? You do as you're told. That's generally the script that most people are told in life is success. especially on the corporate path or to climb the corporate ladder. These are the things that you do. In fact, you kind of see it in even in professional development courses that you take within the company.

Like get this skill, do this thing, do this thing, and then you go up another wrong on the ladder. The problem with that advice is for most immigrants, and I had to learn this myself, you don't get the luxury of living life exactly on this script, whether it be the immigration process, whether it be the fact that you have to get a visa for something, whether it be how you prove yourself, sometimes you've got to bop and weave. It cannot be that straight path that you dreamed about for yourself. And using that wisdom in my life, part of why there was the pivot from engineering to law was that. I'd worked out the possibility of my work visa. You only get it for so long, six years.

And then you've got to do another proving of yourself. And I was tired of that. And I said, you know what? I'm going to go back on a student visa and build another path. And see how that. So I had to be flexible enough to let go of these dreams or this script. And it took confidence to say, figure it out before I'll figure out again. And I was talking to a class that had just come through the pandemic.

And so they were very anxious about what was going on for the future. And it's like, you'll be less anxious if you weren't too worried about a script. If you could just figure how can I confidently, like, navigate whatever life is throwing at me going off script. That was the commencement speech I gave given the time that those students were in and graduating into. Yeah. And I think it's never been more true that that path doesn't exist in the same way that it used to. I had a conversation with my son a few weeks ago. It was the first time in my life that I felt almost like I had nothing to offer him in the way of career advice.

Literally, because I was like any time up until like a few years ago, I'd have been like, well, you know, I mean, I wouldn't, I don't know what you should do. I don't, but I can offer some guidance and some ideas and some, and now, particularly with AI, I'm like, I really don't know. Yeah. I really don't know what jobs. I just don't know. Maybe that's part of getting old. Maybe you just eventually, maybe everybody hits this point where they're like, wait a second, I don't understand this world. But I feel like this is.

There are no traditional paths anymore. And I think that's what we're picking up. And it's more prevalent now more than ever. But there's something about this generation, too, that I'm enjoying, is that they realize, and I say this. I recently said this to a bunch of early career folks. We've been thought to like audition for our lives, where it's like, oh, prove yourselves for this thing, apply for this job. And it's time to start authoring your own life.

You want something? Figure out how you get the opportunity and do it. And this generation, something magical about this generation is that they figured how to make money outside of corporate. Mm-hmm. Because really what kept us on the path or what kept us auditioning is who was going to be paying our paycheck. Yes. 100%. Yeah.

And so there's more freedom now to author the path that you want, author the life that you want. And so I say to people, the life that you want is about how brave and how courageous you're willing to be to get it. And that's always been true, but it's more prevalent now that people can actually do that. Right. I want to talk about an idea of bringing your whole self. Yeah. Authenticities. The short-coded word, authenticity.

Yeah. Yeah. I have a very complex relationship with that word authenticity and bringing your whole self to work. Because, I mean, the way I think about it, sometimes you've, you've, you've, you've, you've, got a code switch to bring yourself to work. You've got to, there's some level of survival that it takes. I think you've got to be culturally intelligent in reading the room to understand what parts of yourself you bring to work.

It's a cute phrase to say, bring your whole self to work. But once you go into a room, you can tackle you to the site, this is the part of self that I can bring fully. Some people call it code switching. I call it being clever to say, this is the part of me that this room needs right now. Right. It's not always trauma dumping. It's not always sharing your pain.

I think bring your whole self to work is really about how do you use a part of you or a story within you to build a bridge or build a trust in that room? And sometimes that's not your whole self. It's just a part of yourself. Right. It also assumes that there is this fixed self that you could drag around to all these scenarios. Right? And that's not the way we are. No. Like, I'm different with you than I would be different with my partner, Ginny, tonight, than I would be with my son.

And that's not because I'm inauthentic. It's because there's no, like, I'm not this monolithic thing. I'm a shifting. Absolutely. And that's life. And so being wise and skillful about that, I think makes complete sense. Yeah. And I am certainly one of those people that realized, as I brought, quote unquote, more of myself to work.

Yeah. I did better in the relationships that I was able to build with people. But that was certainly within some constraints. Yeah. Right? It was certainly within some like, here's a fruitful time to share a little bit more than I might. You know what? This meeting is probably not the time.

Yes. Right? Yes. And again, I don't think that's inauthentic. Being someone you're not, that's inauthentic. Showing different sides of who you are is just skillful. Bingo! You got it.

That's, yes, that's exactly it. Yeah. That's exactly it. I love, you know, what you said was authenticity. Yeah. Is not a vibe. It's a skill. Yes.

Yes. Like that, I think that really speaks to it. Yeah. We talked earlier about turning towards situations with curiosity. Mm-hmm. And you describe your first. freshman year of college, where you just moved here from Nigeria and someone asked you, what did they ask you?

It was Martha Luther King weekend, and I was asked, what does Martha Luther King, Jr. mean to you? And I froze, and it wasn't because I didn't know who Martha Luther King Jr. was. It was that I grew up in Nigeria. I'm a black African. We didn't have the civil rights movement impact us or our history or our learnings. We learned of him as some kind of historical figure that did something. And I can still see this all playing out because it's the theft of the library and this reporter because it's, I mean, the camera's in my face, the journalist and kind of motioned on. And I remember saying blurting out that he doesn't mean anything to me, but I know who he is. And I went back after that and I was talking to my roommate about the situation in this expectation that just because I'm black, I should know black American history.

I've since learned it over time. I've been here for 20 plus years. Because now you're in America. It makes sense to learn it because you're in America, but not in Nigeria. Not in Nigeria. And I remember her saying to me, well, you should learn. Because when I walk into a room, no one picks up intersectionality first. They don't see that layer.

What they see me as is a black woman. And I will never speak for all the experiences of black America because I'm not a black American, but I understand it now. because I've taken the time to learn it. I mean, I write about this an immigrant. That's really the work of cultural intelligence is I understand who people expect me to be in rooms. And I can correct them, but it doesn't mean that I don't understand because I haven't learned versus that dumb experience that I had, like dumbfounded when the reporter came up to me. Can I take a beat, pause?

I'm remembering because I know I've written on two different things. There was that, and then there's the, did you grow up in a tree scenario? That's the one. Okay. I was thinking about that one, too, because I write the author Luther King one and I talk about it. But I can make this all work. So let me bring us into it. Yes. Okay. So I'll try to remember which one. So that is a great story. There's another story from college that I can't. It's when someone said something so outrageous to you and how you handled it then and how you would handle it now. Oh, my goodness. Okay. This is the way you're talking about.

Oh, man, to go back to, like, my first year in America, there are a lot of stories. Maybe I'll do a book just on its stories. But this particular one asked whether I grew up in a tree in Nigeria. And I was so, like, shocked and offended. I mean, I'm young. I'm shocked, offended about the question. I'm like, what the hell are you talking about? And I'm kind of like the sarcastic individual, so I retorted, yeah, right next to the

American embassy. Because, I mean, if I grew up in the tree, that means the diplomats that come here from America also live in the same situation that I did. But what I didn't understand at the time that I blurted that out is what the media shows about Africa and what it shows about how we live. And it doesn't show the full story. There's a quote by Chimanda, the says the problem with stereotypes is not that they're not true. The problem with stereotypes is that it's not the complete story. Right. So more than 20 years in here, I probably would have invited that,

but I would have shown a picture of how I grew up. I probably would have invited a very different conversation, exposure, showed them that, yes, those things are there. There's people that live in mud houses. There's people that live in tree houses in Nigeria. it's not that it's not true it's that it's not the complete picture and so approaching that with validating some of what they know and adding to their knowledge right and then opening up the opportunity for them to be curious about asking me more it's probably a better way to handle

the situation yeah i love that idea about stereotypes you know because when you bring up stereotypes You'll be like, well, stereotypes are, you know, they're there for a reason. You're like, well, yes, and to your point, but it's just, it's just focusing on one aspect. Yeah, we can't make it the whole story. Of people. And people are so much more, and all situations are so much more complex than that. But I just thought the way you wrote about this was, was really gracious. People don't know what they don't know.

You know, to say one is old enough to know better assumes they've been exposed to better, right? Yes. How can, how we respond can matter more than what was asked. And that's, that is a, that is a position of strong agency. Right? That's a position of strong agency to say, whatever is brought to me could be ignorant, could be done, but the way I respond to it is more important.

And I don't know that a lot of people feel that way. Yeah. There's some kind of wisdom that comes with time, I think. And as we become a more global world, and what I mean by that is before, when people came to America in the 1800s, they have to be on a boat. They travel a long time. There wasn't a lot of exposure. Now people can get on a plane, right? Now people have the internet where they can literally see other worlds, right?

But it still doesn't erode. And why I use that phrase to say you're old enough to know better doesn't mean it's still just because we now know see different things or exposed to different news doesn't mean that we've been exposed to it doesn't mean we've had the opportunity to have a conversation about it. Yeah, exactly. You know, so what I see even, and this happens too a lot when I see people spiral out on conversations online. And it's of that position. Well, I mean, this is 2025. They should know. They should have seen.

They should have. But it's like, you don't know what sections of the Internet they're on. You don't know what they've seen or what they've been exposed to. And they've certainly never had a human conversation on it. They've probably just been in, like, chat rooms talking about this. So here's your opportunity when they have that point of contact with you to have a different conversation. Yeah. And I think that that idea goes both directions, meaning someone may have a lot of ignorance

about our situation or may have a lot of ignorance about, you know, say a particular group's situation. Yeah. But oftentimes the people on the other side of that don't understand that person's situation. And it seems like that person's situation is better. But unless you've grown up, just to take an example, right, you could have someone on the left who's very multicultural and thinks that's the way to be and you have someone on the right who's not, right? A lot of people that I've talked to, particularly in, particularly I see this in the coastal areas, they have no concept at all of what it would like, what it would be

like to grow up in a tiny town in the middle of Ohio. They don't understand what that world looks like at all. Yes. And so there's this demanding that those people understand the other world, which they should, but there's no understanding back to what that world is like. And it's a different world. It is. It is. And I like what you said about never having had a human conversation about it because there's one thing to see it on TV.

Yes. It's another thing to encounter anyone, a human who's living that way or has lived that way. Those are very different things. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.

But I just really loved that. we respond can matter more than what was asked, you know, because I do, as I said, I think it's an agency thing. And I think it's always been a big value of mine, which is like, I don't want to just return what's given to me. Like, I want to decide who I'm going to be. I'm not going to be who you expect me to, right? The simplest example, the time this first came to me was when my first wife and I split.

it. And it was really painful. My son was two and a half. She left me for a guy who was in AA. It was a very pain. I was angry. I was really angry. But I just had this moment where I was like, but I want to be towards her the way I want to be based on my values, not based on what she did. And again, I don't say that because I'm like this high-minded person. I mean it because it gives me, puts me back. You talked about being an author. It puts me back. You talk about being an author. It puts me back. in the author seat when you respond that way. Yes. You're in the author seat. Yes. Here's who I am, regardless of who you are. Yeah. Yeah.

Within reason, right? I mean, you know, someone... We're all human at the end of the day. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I mean, these are the things we can control, right? You can control our response. We can't control what we're asked, right?

And so if you look at it in that perspective, we can control, you know, our response. We can control what we do. Yep. Agency. I love that for agency. It's yours to figure. And I think if most people understood the power of their agency, we'll be better off. I want to ask you a question.

This kind of comes all the way back to being the first black mayor of Upper Arlington, about being in a situation where you find your daughter at 5'1 to straighten her hair. And it would be very easy to be angry about the systemic injustice of colored people in the United States. Yeah. Which I think there's a lot of reason to be angry, right? And there's a lot of reason to believe that it is the way it is. It may not be right, but it is the way it is. And I'm controlled by those circumstances. And I find there's this really challenging middle ground to find, which is I am the way I am because of the circumstances that exist in the world.

And I'm entirely my own, just my own creation. And I don't know that we're either of those things. Yeah. How did you sort of, because you sort of, to me, threaded the needle. Yeah. Right. So how did you know to do that? What did you have to say to yourself to get there?

So for me, it's about the children. There's actually Ugandan parable about this. Like, how are the children? Threading that needle for me was about how my daughter and my son would move in society. How would they move in rooms? How would they move in at the park? I didn't want them to feel like they were less than in any regard because of their skin color. They don't, they're five and two at this point.

They, that innocence of seeing the world as it is, we all are humans, we all can play together. We all get to go to school. We all have the capacity to learn. This is, the dynamics almost are the same things that happen on the gender front of things. Like, how do women check out a stem? Like, at what point is, and it's because of this repeated saying, oh, women are not going to math. Oh, women are that like. Yep.

You don't want to start putting out. I didn't want that to be put out for my kids. Right. So it was easy to thread that needle where it's like, well, mommy is going to figure out how do other people relate to you? How do other people understand your world? And I remember when I was campaigning, I would say to people, one simple task. And it's always one task that I ask people to do today. Look at your month.

Think about who you went to dinner with. People you had in your intimate spaces. If you didn't have a black person or a person of color that you invited over to your house for dinner, you need to expand your circle. Because our children learn more from those very intimate spaces. If you can't have someone over, my daughter has never had to live. luxury of not having people of different colors and races in our house for dinner or her play dates.

But there's some families in UA that have never had a black person over to their house, that have never had dinner and invited, you know, friends over. So how do those people expand their circle? Because for a lot of those people, it's not because they don't want to. Yeah. It's because there's 30 of you in all of Upper Arlington, right? I mean, your dinner dates are booked. I know exactly what you mean.

How do you expand you? Seriously. I mean, I think that's a real question of that I think a lot of well-minded people who are in sort of the white enclaves to a certain extent. How do I expand that circle in a way that is authentic, not me going to hunt out my token black person? I know, right? Yes. This is a genuine question. No, you're absolutely right.

And that for a lot of people is the child. challenge. I get that question a lot. Because, yes, what ends up happening is the burden and the task is on me. I have to be at all the things and, you know, be the face in all the rooms and, you know, make all the connections. I think it starts with playing in the spaces that you are. So at their workplace, you know, what do you have on teams? What do you have there? Intentionally going to activities that you just really wouldn't go to. The Lincoln Theater here in Columbus brings in some incredible artists and black artists. And look at those rooms. Find things you genuinely art. Think about the art that you go view. Think about black artists. Think about black musicians.

Think about books that you generally wouldn't have read. Read a different experience. Those things are the things that expand. Even for your children, think about the books that are on their bookshelf. This was actually really where it started with, with. Arbery in her classroom, it was like, look at all these books on the bookshelf. Start with there. Start adding different books to this bookshop.

Here's a list of other black children author. How cool will it be for your child to read and see different animation and see a different way that they do dinner or different celebrations or Ali or whatever that they celebrate and think, oh, why do they cook beans and put a penny for New Year's Eve? Start that question, start those questions. And it usually starts because they've been exposed to something different. And then from there, you find the people that you do community with. It takes some intentionality if you are going to want to expand your circle. For me, I don't have to do much, right? That is what I'm surrounded by.

But I get it on the other side. You have to do a little bit more work than I ever have to do. As we wrap up, take one thing from today and ask yourself, How will I practice this before the end of the day? For another gentle nudge, join Good Wolf Reminders text list. It's a short message or two each week, packed with guest wisdom and a soft push towards action. Nearly 5,000 listeners are already loving it. Sign up free at one you feed.net slash SMS.

No noise, no spam, just steady encouragement to feed your good wolf. You and I are going to continue this in the post-show conversation, because I have more. that I want to do here. Listeners, we're out of time. Listeners, if you'd like access to that, post-show conversation as well as all the others, add-free episodes, a special episode I do for you, and the good feeling of supporting a show that matters to you, go to one you feed.net slash join. You, Kemi, thank you so much. This has really been fun. Thank you. That time flew by. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring or thought-provoking, I'd love for you to share it with a friend.

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